NASA's 'PhoneSat' Program Points to Satellites of the Future

NASA launched a novel project in April, putting into orbit three satellites that employ an off-the-shelf commercial smartphone as the control system. The satellites hitched a ride on the maiden flight of Orbital Science Corp.'s Antares rocket from NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia.

Each of the three "phonesats" was a 10-centimeter cube with a mass of about 1 kilogram. The trio operated in orbit for about a week, transmitting back down to Earth. The satellite orbits naturally decayed after about one week, as expected, and they re-entered Earth's atmosphere on April 27.

According to Chad Frost, chief of the Mission Design Division at NASA's Ames Research Center, the success of the mission was an important milestone. Building a spacecraft of any sort generally means using very expensive hardware and software, Frost said. But PhoneSat -- comparatively very inexpensive -- breaks the mold. According to Frost, this concept could be used to deploy groups of satellites to, for example, monitor space weather or conditions in various parts of the Earth. "We were very intrigued by the notion that you could build a very low-cost spacecraft based entirely on a smartphone and other consumer electronics devices," he said.

A swarm of advanced and affordable nanosatellites for a coordinated science mission demonstration. (Source: NASA)

The PhoneSat project -- which won Popular Science's 2012 Best of What's New Award for innovation in aerospace -- proved exactly what Frost and his colleagues at NASA had hoped for: "That you can build a spacecraft for orders of magnitude less" than what it typically takes.

Frost said NASA is now seriously looking at several PhoneSat concepts that could include hundreds or even thousands of spacecraft working in conjunction to provide, for example, a space weather early warning system or other such networks for monitoring. Since the PhoneSat project utilizes the Android operating system, it opens up the possibility of apps being created by the global Android developer community being used in space, Frost said. He called the concept "wide open and wildly exciting."

Advances in electronics
The idea of basing a satellite on a smartphone wouldn't be possible without advances made in smartphones over the past few years, Frost noted. "We've driven consumer electronics to the point where they are just amazingly capable little devices and ridiculously affordable for what they can do," he said.

Frost has been at the forefront of aerospace technology for more than 25 years. He joined the Army/NASA joint rotorcraft division in 1997. In his years at NASA, both electronics and spacecraft technology have come a long way. "I'm part of the generation that first started to get their hands on the first computers," Frost said. He added that some of the earliest projects he worked on as an engineer still used analog control systems. The fundamental revolution, he said, beginning with Apollo, was the move to digital flight control.

The culmination of the digital revolution is "flying these smartphones and other systems that have amazing computational power, ridiculously low power consumer, and are insanely inexpensive," Frost said. "I see the revolution in electronics as being the thing that has most fundamentally transformed what we can do and what we will be able to do in the future," he said. "There are other things coming along that will be very exciting and powerful, but I don't know that they will dominate the landscape the way microelectronics can."

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"I am eager to know how NASA has successfully put the smartphones in to orbit? How was the smartphones behavior in the vacuum condition?"

Anandy, even I have the same question about communicate mode and channel, from Smartphone to the remote station in earth. If am not wrong, smartphones won't have such high capability RF signal handling capacity.

The point of the story is that common electronics can be used to effectively do what only government run projects have done in the past. Other concerns raised regarding radiation, performance in a vacuum are all very real issues to overcome, but the point is: common 21st century electronics – available to everyone – are sufficient to power devices we all previously thought required GOLIATH sized budgets.

Remember, making ONE of something is about as expensive as making one-million of something, when you consider economy of scale. Simple economics of mass production.

Good point, tekochip. It's not well known by many non-engineers, but games have always been at or near the state of the art in computational power. As you say, it's nice to know the technology is being put to a worthwhile use.

I had that thought as well. I think the way this becomes very inexpensive (in comparison to a previously typical satellite launch) is that you can launch a whole network of satellites with a single shuttle launche versus one, maybe two, satellites per launch. Whether that work that way or not, the cost of the satellite is a major part of the overall cost and a reduction in cost in "orders of magnitude" is some serious savings!

Add in the consumer advances in rocket launches (Elon Musk, etc.) and that part will also experience an economy of scale in the near future as well.

Phonesat is an inexpensive sat which takes the advantage of latest technology, but the smartphone's hardware is not built to take long-term radiation exposure and they will eventually start to breakdown.

I agree, it's quite amazing to see NASA using COTS products in such an expensive and complex piece of machinery...especially for the crucial control aspect of the satellite. But I have done some coverage of NASA and know they are trying to do more with less, so necessity could be the mother of invention here. It also shows what great minds can do when they don't want to reinvent the wheel.

The standards electrical machines and components are required to meet in the food processing industry are far more stringent than those in traditional plant construction. For specialized production environments such as these, components must not only resist thermal and physical stresses, but they must also be resistant to the chemicals used to sterilize equipment.

The word “smart” is becoming the dumbest word around. It has been applied to almost every device and system in our homes. In addition to smartphones and smart meters, we now hear about smart clothing and smart shoes, smart lights, smart homes, smart buildings, and every trendy city today has its smart city project. Just because it has a computer inside and is connected to the Web, does not mean it is smart.

Was Steve Job’s signature outfit of a black turtleneck, jeans, and sneakers the secret behind his success? Maybe, or maybe not, but it was likely an indication of a decision-making philosophy that enabled him to become one of the most successful innovators of all time.

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